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Abstract Insects are declining in abundance and species richness, globally. This has broad implications for the ecology of our planet, many of which we are only beginning to understand. Comprehensive, large-scale efforts are urgently needed to quantify and mitigate insect biodiversity loss. Because there is broad interest in this topic from a range of scientists, policymakers, and the general public, we posit that such endeavors will be most effective with precise and standardized terms. The Entomological Society of America is the world’s largest association of professional entomologists and is ideally positioned to lead the way on this front. We provide here a glossary of definitions for biodiversity loss terminology. This can be used to enhance and clarify communication among entomologists and others with an interest in addressing the multiple overlapping research, policy, and outreach challenges surrounding this urgent issue. 

Georeferencing is the process of aligning a text description of a geographic location with a spatial location based on a geographic coordinate system. Training aids are commonly created around the georeferencing process to disseminate community standards and ideas, guide accurate georeferencing, inform users about new tools, and help users evaluate existing geospatial data. The Georeferencing for Research Use (GRU) workshop was implemented as a training aid that focused on the creation and research use of geospatial coordinates, and included both data researchers and data providers, to facilitate communication between the groups. The workshop included 23 participants with a wide background of expertise ranging from students (undergraduate and graduate), professors, researchers and educators, scientific data managers, natural history collections personnel, and spatial analyst specialists. The conversations and survey results from this workshop demonstrate that it is important to provide opportunities for biocollections data providers to interact directly with the researchers using the data they produce and vice versa.